American Textile History Museum

ATHM educational programs provide enjoyable opportunities for personal growth and discovery through exposure to information and objects that connect to America's diverse textile heritage and stimulate creativity and problem-solving skills. Our programs for school age children all conform to state achievement regulations and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) curriculum.

The Osborne Library contains a rich and comprehensive collection of printed, pictorial and manuscript material of interest to researchers in a variety of fields. Users include historians of business, technology and labor, textile and exhibit designers, spinners, weavers, architects, filmmakers, textile workers and their families, and the general public. The collections include books, pamphlets, government documents, trade catalogs, advertising material, prints, photographs, insurance maps and business records that document the history of textile production in the United States.

The American Textile History Museum houses one of the largest collections of its kind in the world making it an un-parallel resource for the study of American textile history. Historians and textile designers, architects and preservationist, engineers, novelists, and industrial archaeologists are all drawn to the Museum's collections. The textile and clothing collections include everyday garments, textile samples, textiles, and decorative art objects from the eighteenth century to the present. The tools & machinery collection includes pre-industrial artifacts and tools, industrial and powered machines, and workplace artifacts.